“He died in an explosion aboard the freighter
“They finally got him, then.”
“You know about it,” Bracknell said.
Rubbing at his eyes, Takeo replied, “Only that he was running from something, someone. He was frightened for his life. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about; he said then I’d be marked for murder, too.”
Bracknell sat in the chair in the corner. “Did he ever mention Yamagata to you?”
“No,” Takeo answered, so sharply that Bracknell knew it was a lie. “He never told me anything about why he was being pursued. I only knew that he was in desperate trouble. I changed his appearance, his whole identity, twice.”
“And they still found him.”
“Poor Toshi.” Takeo’s chin sank to his chest.
“He told me about your ability to change people’s identities,” said Bracknell.
Takeo’s head snapped up. He glared at Bracknell.
“I need my identity changed.”
“You said Toshi was a convict? You’re one also, eh?”
Bracknell almost smiled. “The less you know, the safer you are.”
Shaking his head, Takeo said, “I helped my brother because he’s my brother. I’m not going to stick my neck out for you.”
“You’ve helped other people who wanted to start new lives. Toshikazu told me about your work.”
“Those people could afford my fees. Can you?”
With a rueful grin, Bracknell admitted, “I don’t have a penny.”
“Then why should I help you?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell you your brother’s whole story. Who was after him, and why. Then you’ll know, and then I’ll let Yamagata’s people know that you know. The people who killed him will come here to kill you.”
Takeo was silent for several long moments. He stared into Bracknell’s eyes, obviously trying to calculate just how desperate or determined this stranger was.
At last he said, “You want a complete makeover, then?”
“I want to become a certain individual, a man named Dante Alexios.”
“I presume this Alexios is dead. It would be embarrassing if he showed up after you claim his identity.”
“He died in the same explosion your brother did.”
Takeo nodded. “I’ll need his complete medical records.”
“They should be available from the International Astronautical Authority. They keep duplicates of all ship’s crews.”
“And they keep those records private.”
“You’ve done this sort of thing before,” said Bracknell.
“For people who provided me with what I needed.”
“You’re a doctor. Tell the IAA you’ve got to identify a body for United Life and Accident Assurance, Limited. They carried the policy for
Takeo said, “I don’t like getting involved in this.”
“You’ve done worse, from what Toshikazu told me. Besides, you don’t have much of a choice.”
“You’re blackmailing me!”
Bracknell sighed theatrically. “I’m afraid I am.”
The makeover took weeks, and it wasn’t anything like what Bracknell had expected. Takeo obtained Alexios’s medical files from the IAA easily enough; a little money was transferred electronically and he received the dead man’s body scans in less than a day. Then began the hard, painful work.
Takeo kept Bracknell in one of the small but luxuriously appointed suites behind his medical offices. For the first ten days he didn’t see Takeo, except through the intercom phone. Bracknell grew increasingly impatient, increasingly fearful. Any moment he expected security guards to burst into the little suite and drag him back to a ship headed outward to the Belt.
He paced the suite: sitting room, bedroom, a closet-sized kitchen in which he prepared bland microwaved meals from the fully stocked pantry. No liquor, no drugs, no visitors. His only entertainment was video, and he constantly scanned the news nets from Selene and Earth for any hint that he was being hunted. Nothing. He wanted to phone the Selene hospital to see what their files showed about him, but found that he could not place outgoing calls. He was a prisoner again. His jail cell was comfortable, even plush, but still he felt penned in.
When he complained to Takeo, the physician’s artificially handsome image on the phone screen smiled at him. “You’re free to leave whenever you want.”
“You haven’t even started my treatment yet!”
“Yes I have.”
Bracknell stared at the face on the screen.
“The most difficult part of this process,” Takeo explained, with illconcealed annoyance, “is programming the nanomachines. They’ve got to alter your face, your skin, your bone structure. Once I’ve got them programmed, the rest is easy.”
It wasn’t easy.
One ordinary morning, as Bracknell flicked from one news channel to another, thinking that even being arrested again would be better than this utter boredom, a young Asian nurse entered his sitting room bearing a silver tray with a single glass of what looked like orange juice.
“This is your first treatment, sir.”
“This?” Bracknell asked dubiously as he picked up the glass.
“You should go to bed for a nap as soon as you drink it,” the nurse said. “It contains a sedative.”
“And nanomachines?”
She nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes, sir. Many nanomachines. Hundreds of millions of them.”
“Good,” said Bracknell. He drained the glass, then put it back on her tray with a clink.
“You should go to bed now, sir.”
Bracknell thought of asking her if she would accompany him, but decided against it. She left the suite and he walked into his bedroom. The bed was still unmade from the previous night’s sleep.
This is ridiculous, he thought. I’m not sleepy and there’s no—
A wave of giddiness made his knees sag. He plopped onto the bed, heart thumping. His face tingled, itched. He felt as if something was crawling under his skin. It’s only psychosomatic, he told himself. But as he stretched out on the rumpled bed he felt as if some alien parasites had invaded his body. He wanted to scratch his face, his ribs, everywhere. He writhed on the bed, filled with blind dread, moaning in his terror. He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped that sleep would come before he began screaming like a lunatic.
Each morning for six days, the same nurse brought him a glass filled with fruit juice. And nanomachines. For six mornings Bracknell took it with a trembling hand, then went to bed and waited for the sedative to knock him out while his body twitched and writhed. Each day the pain grew sharper, deeper. It was as if his bones were being sawn apart, the flesh of his face and body flayed by a sadistic torturer. He thought of insects infected with the eggs of parasitic wasps that ate out their host’s insides. He lived in writhing agony and horror as the nanomachines did their work inside his body.
But he saw no difference in his face. Every morning he staggered to the lavatory and studied himself in the mirror above the sink. He looked the same, except that his beard did not grow. After three days of the nanotherapy he stopped shaving altogether. There was no need. Besides, his frightened hands shook too much.
He phoned Takeo every day, and received only a computer’s synthesized, “Dr. Koga will return your call at the appropriate time.”
Maybe he’s killing me, Bracknell thought. Using nanomachines to eat out my guts and get rid of me. Still, despite his fears each morning he swallowed down the juice and the invisible devices swarming in it. And suffered the agonies of hell until he passed thankfully into unconsciousness.
One week to the day after Bracknell had started taking the nanotherapy, Koga showed up in his suite.
“How do you feel?” the physician asked, peering at Bracknell intently.
“Like I’m being eaten inside,” Bracknell snapped.
